I woke up this morning at 04:00 and within thirty seconds realised that I was not going back to sleep without a Valium. Too late for a Valium. 03:00 is okay, but if I take one any later than that then I’ll feel even sillier than usual for the first couple of hours in the morning at the office. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but I’m going to be a little too busy for day-tripping, as it is Friday. Mondays and Fridays . . . what can I say.

Since it was that time of the day when work seems intolerable, I decided to play. One of my favourite games is Turn Something Into Something Else. You’ve seen this mama Canada Goose here before. I know, I know, some of you think of them as vermin, but I don’t have to live with them crapping all over the place, so I can think of them as cute:

This image was a good candidate for art because it’s pretty simple. All I had to do was get rid of the cement block wall and punch up the colours with a few clicks and pretso-changeo, I’ve got art:If I had some more time, I’d find a nice woodland scene and paste it in the background. Maybe another day.

Here’s a canoe that you’ve also seen here before:Again, a good subject because it’s simple. The waves rolling in from a passing boat also give the image depth and a vanishing point at the horizon – a perfect starting point for art.

I first tried the Photoshop Poster Edges filter:You’ll have to click all of these images to enlarge them to see the full effects. This one is interesting, but it is not what I’m looking for. The waves have taken over the image now and the canoe detail is lost in the filter effect.

The Watercolour filter is more of what I’m looking for:The waves are still there, doing their compositional job, but now the canoe is much more interesting, as is the water. The Watercolour filter is one of my favourites, but it’s tricky and doesn’t work at all for some images.

Here’s another image you’ve seen here before and it too is simple:Cute little varmint, eh?

On the little Chipmunk, the Watercolour filter worked a treat:The only problem is that his teensy feet were lost in his shadow, so I had to fake them. They don’t look like Chipmunk feet to me either, so don’t bother to tell me.

Here is a nice, pensive shot of Carol Dover which you have also seen here before:Simple and poignant.

I first tried a weird filter called Smudge Stick. I don’t like the sound of it, but it does sometimes yield interesting results:However, in this case, Smudge Stick is not my weapon of choice.

Call me Crazy (please), but I’ve always imagined writing comic books – not the kid’s stuff. I have a sort of comic book brain; you wouldn’t believe what goes on in there. Walter Mitty was brain dead compared to me. The problem is producing the art; the stories will take care of themselves. I’ve been working on some techniques for turning photos into comic strip illustrations. There are tons of products and lessons on the web for doing this and I’ve tried a lot of them, but never been satisfied with the results. They simply don’t look comic book enough for me. So, I’ve developed my own ultra-secret technique which someday is going to make me a lot of money (yeah, sure):Remember, you saw it here first, folks. The MadDog Comic Book Generator. Just set up your story board, take your shots in the studio or wherever you like, pay me a lot of money for my secrets and do what I tell you and voilà – you’re a comic book baron.

Happy Birthday, Robert Wadlow, Wherever You Are On this day in 1918, in Alton Illinois, in the Land of the More-or-Less Free and the Home of the Easily Frightened, was born a teensy-eensy-weensy little baby whose destiny was to become the World’s Tallest Person. He still holds that record today. Robert Pershing Wadlow was born weighing only 3.85 kilos. When...

CWA Latino Night THIS FROM: Lorraine OLE! CWA is hosting the first ever “Latino night”! Come on over and enjoy some good South American fare and salsa dancing! DATE: Saturday, 16 August 2008 TIME: 6:30 PM for 7:00 PM start VENUE: CWA PRICE: K40. Includes complimentary drink, main meal and dessert plus oodles...

Muli Ants and Weird Gravity It’s Saturday morning and it’s raining. Bummer! If I look out my window, I can just see a bit of clearing in the west, so I think that we will be okay for our regular 10:00 dive. In the meantime, I’ve been sitting here since six o’clock waiting for something...

Examples of Photoshop Artistic and Brush Stroke Filter Effects This one is going to make you wonder. My primary graphics arts workstation recently turned belly-up and went “pop”. When rebuilding it, I discovered, to my dismay, that I’d lost a few folders because I did not have them clicked for backup. Horrors! A SYSADMIN lost some files – not...

Faking It – Four Views of Firenza 6:00 AM. Mind is a blank. No good light outside. Must write – discipline requires it. I started to reminisce. That usually produces something. Thinking back to when we travelled down to Tuscany from Vienna with Claudia Spitzl and her companion Helmut, I looked through my photo archives for something interesting....

It’s A Bug’s Life Our boss, Kyle Harris, (Director of PBG-PNG) runs a blog here along with his wife, Kathy. It has a nice mixture of posts; have a look at it. They are just getting started on the blog, so they could use some hits. Yesterday I noticed a post that struck me...

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 9:48 am and is filed under Photography Tricks.
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